Requiem for a Warrior
by gioia99
Summary: A little one shot delving into Octavia's thoughts during her duel with Echo atop the cliff, and during her subsequent fall. Written in honour of our favourite warrior princess


**A little piece I felt compelled to write following the latest episode of The 100, centered around Octavia Blake's thoughts and feelings during her scene on the cliff top, written in honor of my favorite character from the show. Warning now for dark themes**

 _Born on a Monday,_

 _Christened on a dark and stormy Tuesday_

 _Married on a grey and grisly Wednesday_

 _Took ill on a mild and mellow Thursday_

 _Worse on a bright and breezy Friday_

 _Dead on a gay and glorious Saturday_

 _Buried on a baking, blistering Sunday_

* * *

"It doesn't have to be this way."

Her adversary's words rung in her ears, their ominosity tingling her senses, their condescendance feeding her anger. The fiery emotion burned through her veins as she stood firm. It drew its source from many things – Bellamy's betrayal, Kane's demotion of her from his security detail, and of course, the ever present – and ever agonizing – loss of her heart, her home.

Most of all though, she was angry because her enemy was _right_.

It _didn't_ have to be this way. They could have been allies still. They could have been working together to find a solution for the coming radiation.

 _Yet here they were_.

"It does. You made sure of that." She spat, tightening her grip on her blade, and charging forward to resume battle once again.

Time blurred.

Steel clashed.

Painful blows were landed.

Then, in one, single instant, everything came to a roaring halt.

Octavia Blake looked down to find Echo's sword buried in her stomach

...

* * *

Chapter 1: Pain

 _It was something Octavia had spent many a moment pondering: How did Pike feel, when she killed him?_

 _Was it quick? Was it painless? Or did he suffer, as she had so desperately wanted him to? She had hoped he had, for everything he had done, everything he had taken from her. Did he leave this world regretful of his actions, or satisfied knowing that she had proven his point with a bloodthirsty act of vengeance?_

 _In some ways it drove a knife through her heart, knowing that she would never be able to see inside the mind of the man who had murdered her home, never be able to know why he did what he did. Only through murder was she able to get a taste._

 _Still, in the sparse moments of quiet in the aftermath of the City of Light, she had found her thoughts shifting involuntary, to wondering exactly not_ how _he felt, but rather_ what _he felt._

 _Despite the death she had been exposed to since landing all those days and nights ago, she had never come close to feeling what is was like to know she was going to die. Sure, there were many times when she could have met her end, but never a moment when it was certain._

 _All she had wanted was to give Pike that sense of doom – to know that he was going to die, to know that, whilst Skaikru may have won the war, he had lost his own battle._

 _After all, one of the first things that Indra taught her was that defeat is as much mental as it was physical_

She barely registered Echo coldly yanking the blade from her body, barely felt the blood starting to pour from the grievous wound left in its wake.

For it was at that moment that the true pain hit.

Fire shot through her, setting her nervous system alight. It wasn't hot like the flames that had incinerated Finn, nor was it intense like the blast from the rockets that had vaporized the attacking grounders. No, it was cold, sharp and slicing, a twin borne equal to the steel which had pierced the very flesh the sensation originated from.

It was not intense and overwhelming, like the blows Fio had rained down on her. No, it was much worse, for it bought with it not agony, but an ominous, insatiable and utterly soul destroying sense of doom.

She looked up into the victorious eyes of her foe and two minds became one. In the moment of defeat each warrior perfectly understood the other, _and the exact instant you understand your enemy, you also love them_.

As her breathing became labored and heavy, Octavia's eyes widened in realization.

 _Now she knew. Now she knew what Pike felt._

 _..._

* * *

Part 2: Loss

 _When Octavia allowed her brother to lead her out of their room for the first time in sixteen years, she never thought it would be the last time she would see those grey walls. When she danced around without a care in the world, she never thought it would be the last time she saw her brother completely content._

 _When Aurora Blake held her hand, stroked her cheek and kissed her goodbye before leaving to get her rations of food, she never thought it would be the last time it would see her mother._

 _The greatest torture about the present is that hindsight only exists in the past, and déjà vu only exists in the future. There is no way of knowing which course the river of fate will take, no way of predicting which side the sword will land on. Fate is a game of russian roulette – only instead of one out of six bullets, there are five in the chamber. When presented with a choice, the chances are that your choice will end in pain, in one way or another, but that's the thing: we aren't to know that. We simply choose what we feel is right at the time, and know that everything happens for a reason._

 _Octavia had realized this too late. By that time she had already been thrown in a cell, thrust into a whole new level of isolation, surrounded only by her guilt and an endless stream of 'what-ifs' floating around in her conscience._

 _She knew the rules. Her brother and her mother had stressed them many a time to her ignorant ears. She knew her mother was going to be floated, a fate she would share the day she turned eighteen – a fate that she had chosen for herself_

 _What kept her awake at night, tears streaming down her face and desperate pleading whimpers for her family's love and protection pouring from her mouth was that she hadn't been able to see her mother die. At first, she was glad that she had been spared the pain, but in time, she came to realise that it would be a mercy compared to the relentless agony of not being able to see her one more time._

 _Of not being able to say goodbye_

Felled by Echo's blade, Octavia staggered backwards, already feeling the effects of the mortal blow.

Desperately, she willed herself to keep fighting, to pick up her blade and strike Echo down, take her victory, and live another day.

Her body betrayed her however, weakened by shock and blood loss her limbs were unable to respond to her commands. With that realization came another: she wasn't going anywhere. She was going to die, here and now, on this cliff top with only an enemy for company.

Suddenly, Bellamy sprang to the front of her mind, and she shuddered violently as a whole new form of torture wracked her small frame.

Psychological torture.

Bellamy had no idea what had happened. He was probably with Clarke, planning how to defend against the radiation, completely oblivious to the fact that she had just been stabbed and was dying in that very moment.

Tears brimmed her eyes as she realized her life had come full circle. Now _she_ was going to die and Bellamy wasn't even going to know when it happened. He would only find out when he was undoubtedly going to be told by Echo. And then he would realize – just as she did all those nights ago – that the person he loved more than any other in the world was gone forever, there was no getting her back, and that he would never get to say goodbye to _her._

She couldn't even bring herself to imagine how he would react.

The only comforting thing about being imprisoned when her mother was floated was that she never saw the aftermath, never saw her mother's corpse floating lifelessly in the death grip of space. She could at least cling to the memories of when she was alive, instead of having them tainted by the memory of her not.

Remembering her surroundings, she made a vow, there and then, to give Bellamy the same gift: to not have to hold his dead sister in her arms, and send her off into oblivion himself.

She staggered backwards, towards the edge of the cliff. In that moment, she stopped fighting, and let gravity take its hold, pulling her from her feet and into the void below.

...

* * *

Part 3: Gravity

 _Back in the early days, back when they had just landed and things like Mountain Men, Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Meltdowns were but the stuff of imagination, when grounders were monsters and butterflies were the world, Bellamy had told her what happened to that little girl, Charlotte. How she had committed suicide with a leap off a cliff and a flight into a never ending black abyss._

 _She had wondered what it would take to make such a decision, what sort of mentality was required to willingly make such a jump? Was it a strength that made that little girl do what she did? To save lives at the cost of her own? Or was it a weakness? A chronic unwillingness to face the darkness of her actions? Octavia never knew, and listening to her brothers haunted voice as he recounted that tragic event, she was sure that she never wanted to find out._

 _When she was little, her mother and her brother would read to her. They told her wondrous stories, of conquering armies, beautiful princesses, and the labors of gods. Her favorites though were always the ones about the birds. She fantasized about what they must feel, to be able to fly with the breeze, untainted and unburdened with not a care in the world._

 _What they must feel to be free._

 _As she got older though, the tales started losing their effect. With each night spent alone in the darkness under the floor, so too did the feathered beacons of hope retreat their wings a little farther from her mind. As the years passed, they turned on her, taunting her with their flapping wings and their chirping beaks, their freedom mocking her to the point where she no longer wanted to fly – where the imaginings of such a sensation no longer enraptured her, but terrified her._

 _Indeed, if you broke down every law in the world to get to the devil, only for the devil to turn around on you, where would you hide?_

Octavia fell.

Fast.

She vaguely registered Echo's shocked face peering over the edge, vanishing further and further into the distance. She didn't care. No, she had more important things to focus on.

She closed her eyes, and quickly lost herself in the sensations of the world around her. She felt the grip of gravity, its power, the unbreakable force propelling her ever faster through the air. The wind whipping past her – _through her,_ assaulting her body with its ferocity, yet cushioning her in a way she had never felt before. She felt the sunlight on her face, warming her: a gentle, welcoming embrace.

She opened her eyes again.

Suddenly, she was no longer falling down.

No, instead she was horizontal, and the cliff face whipping past her was actually the ground.

She was flying!

So this is what the birds in her fairytales felt like, to be able to move with the breeze, free from the constraints of the ground and the limitations of society – to be one with the very air that sustained her life.

She allowed herself to relax, as a strange feeling of contentment rose up inside of her.

Finally, she was free.

...

* * *

Part 4: Death

 _Many nights locked up in her cell on the Ark, Octavia had found herself wishing it had been her that had been floated, instead of her mother._

 _It made more sense. She was never even supposed to have existed in the first place. She made no contribution to society in any way, and no one would miss her when she was gone. Her loss would be her own, no one else's to bear._

 _She had found herself laughing at the thought of how she had been afraid of the dark as a child, terrified of being shut into that lifeless void under floor again. She begged and pleaded not to go, but she did anyway, despite her fear. The only thing that got her through was the constant repetition of her mother's words._

 _And now? Now she had found herself embracing it. Throughout those terrible months, she sank deeper into the darkness, to the point where she began checking her rations for anything sharp that she could use to slit her wrists, and join her mother in eternity. She had never seen anyone die. How bad could it be?_

 _Then she was sent down to the ground, and she very quickly discovered that death could be very, very bad indeed._

 _The first was Atom. The first person other than her own blood to show her kindness. The person she had shared her first kiss with, and even though she wasn't sure what she felt for him was love, he remained the first person she had cared about in a way that wasn't familial._

 _Seeing his body scarred and deformed by the acid fog had left a mark in her mind, a scar that she would never heal from. The sight of the once handsome young man now reduced to nothing but a near unrecognizable series of welts, burns and blisters had brought vomit to the back of her throat. Suddenly, death was real. And the fear came back._

 _The first time she took a life, she thought nothing of it at first. It had been in the heat of the battle at the Drop Ship, and her actions had saved her brother's life. It was only later, when she was fleeing with Lincoln that the realization of what she had done hit her like the three hundred pound Panther they'd had for dinner one night. Suddenly, she realised she had the power within her to inflict that which she feared most. She had ability to take someone: a man with friends, loved ones, a whole life that she wasn't aware of – and in an instant, with one violent thrust, rip all of that violently away from him. That first kill had nearly broken her. It was only her home that brought her through._

 _Of all the events she had faced in life, from being hidden under the floor for sixteen years, to being thrown in the Skybox, being sent to the ground and becoming a warrior, none had changed her in the same way Lincoln's death had._

 _Not a single night went by that she didn't picture his face in her mind, when she wasn't kept awake by the haunting dreams of him kneeling in the mud in that clearing... the cold steel barrel pressed against his temple... the sound of the gunshot... the body of the man the loved falling..._

 _She'd always thought him invulnerable: the fearless hero who returned her love in the way only he could. Even through the events with the Mountain Men and the Reaper Red drug, she never gave up hope, never thought she would face the day when she would have to accept that he was no longer in her life._

 _And every night she would wake up panting, covered in a cold sweat and that same fear of death in her eyes. She would roll over, expecting to come up against the warmth and safety of his chest, waiting for the feeling of his arms wrapping around her and his deep voice carrying her favorite words as a whisper in her ear._

"Ai laik Okteivia kon Skaikru"

 _And every time it didn't happen, another tear slipped from her eye._

It was funny, she realized, that if none of this had happened, if she was still up on the Ark, she would still be alive. She hadn't been due to get floated for another 6 months when they had been sent down to the ground.

But that was not to be. Fate had brought her here, now, falling off of this cliff with this wound in her side.

Retrospectively, she found herself asking: where would she rather be? Still rotting away in a cell, lonely, miserable, but _alive_ , or falling as she was, having experienced life on the ground.

The ever present assault on her senses of the smell of the ground – still present, still wondrous, like an electricity permeating her very veins gave her her answer.

Subconsciously, she tightened her grip on the broken hilt of Lincoln's blade, bringing it closer to her chest as she forced herself to say it in her mind: _There was nowhere else she would rather be_.

On the Ark, she had believed that it was better to have died on her feet than to keep living on her knees. Now though, know she knew: _It was better to have lived on her feet than to have died on her knees_.

She knew she had made mistakes. She knew that everyone only did what they thought was right – including Pike. She knew that people would miss her, that Bellamy would be heartbroken and that things may never be the same for any of the others again.

But she knew they would be able to deal with it, because she had been able to deal with it. Her fight may have been over, but theirs would continue. Whether they struggled or thrived didn't matter. As long as they survived. As long as they _lived_. If they could do that, then she would launch forth into the deep willingly.

The river rushed up beneath her, faster and faster, sealing her destiny.

Her senses dulled, her thoughts slurred, the pain in her side vanished. In that moment, she was totally at peace. She pictured Lincoln firmly in her head, knowing that she would be seeing him soon.

Before she hit the water, she closed her eyes and repeated to herself one last time:

" _I am not afraid."_

 _..._

 _Deep into that darkness, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting._

 _Dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before._

The End

 **I have never cried at a television show before, but I would be lying if I said the scenes of 4x04 'A LIE unguarded' didn't bring me close.**

 **For me, Octavia is by far the standout character on the show, everything she stands for, her development as a character and the way Marie brings the character to life is so well done and in a way that is so realistic and relatable is what, for me, makes The 100 one of if not the best television show going around at the moment.**

 **I feel the producers made a huge mistake in including the later season footage of her in the pre-season trailer, as I feel that knowing she survived massively spoilt the emotional power of the cliff scene and Bellamy's reaction - which was equally moving, and that is what compelled me to write this piece.**

 **You probably noticed I drew inspiration from several poems and songs when creating this, the major ones being:**

 **'Solomon Grundy' - James Orchard Halliwell**

 **'The Raven' - Edgar Allan Poe**

 **'Hurricane' - Thirty Seconds to Mars**

 **'Survivor Guilt' - Rise Against**

 **'North Dakota' - Mako**

 **I hope you guys enjoyed this piece and that my characterisation of Octavia is somewhat believable**

 **Hopefully I will be updating some of my full length 100 stories soon, although I make no promises as literary inspiration is somewhat hard to come by for me at the moment.**

 **Feel free to leave any feedback you might have, be it good or bad, I'll gratefully accept anything that helps me improve as an author.**

 **Goodbye for now, and long may live Okteivia kom Skaikru**

 **Gioia99**


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